Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) Review

Ubuntu. A linux distribution which needs no introduction, but I'll give one anyway.

Ubuntu is an african word meaning "Humanity to others". Ubuntu is currently the most popular linux distribution, thanks to its ease of use, simplicity, and superb hardware detection. Ubuntu also has a very large community forum, which means that it's fairly easy to get help in solving problems that may arise. Ubuntu offers security updates and patches for each standard release for 1.5 years after it is released. There are also LTS (Long Term Support) releases every 2 years. The LTS releases are supported for 3 years on the desktop edition, and for 5 years on the server edition. The next release, Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx), will be an LTS release. Each version is numbered as x.yy, where x is the last digit of the year, and y is the month eg. 9.10 . The codename is an alliteration with an adjective and an animal, with the first letter of each corresponding to the number of releases. For example, Karmic Koala is the 11th release of Ubuntu.

There are many official variants of Ubuntu. There is Ubuntu (which uses the GNOME desktop), Ubuntu Server (which is very minimal and uses the CLI [command line environment] by default), Ubuntu NetBook Remix, Kubuntu (which uses the KDE desktop), Kubuntu NetBook Remix, and Xubuntu (which uses the Xfce desktop). There are a few others as well. I installed the standard Ubuntu 9.10 within Virtualbox 3.0.10 .

The boot menu for the Ubuntu 9.10 installer looks identical to the ones in Ubuntu 8.04, 8.10, and 9.04 .

Ubuntu 9.10 has a slightly different boot process. Instead of the old fashioned loading meter, there are now 2 parts of the boot process. First there's a small white pulsating Ubuntu logo in the centre of the screen, then it switches to a graphical environment where you see a scrolling load bar. It looks pretty nice and is definitely comparable to Windows 7's boot splash.

Here's the desktop. Since this is running from the Live CD, I can do many of the things that I can with a fully installed system. The downsides of running the Live CD is that since it runs from a CD, it is read way slower than from a standard hard drive. Also, everything done in a Live CD session is lost upon shutdown.

Ubuntu has what just might be the simplest OS (Operating System) installer ever made. It has only 6 or 7 steps (depends if you have Windows or another linux distribution installed). The installer is exactly the same as it was in Ubuntu 9.04, except for one difference.

English please.

Canada-Montreal for the time zone.

The installer correctly guessed my keyboard layout. I think it gets this from the language and the time zone.

If there is an existing partition on the drive, there are two extra options which allow you to shrink it to give space for Ubuntu, or to use the largest continuous free space for Ubuntu. The other two options are to erase an entire drive, or to manually set up the partitions. I chose to "Erase and use the entire disk".

Here I put in my name, username, password, computer name, and choose how I want to log on to my user.

If I had Windows or another linux distribution installed, there would be an extra step here allowing me to import settings from them.

Here's the verification and advanced options screen. Everything looks good.

Here's that major change with the installer. There is now a slide show. Rather than a slideshow with claims of how "Windows 7 is the best yet" or something like that, the slides outline the most commonly used programs included with Ubuntu and gives a little description about it.

Go grab some coffee or tea or orange juice, or check your email. The installation takes between 10-25 minutes.

Time to restart...

And here's my newly installed desktop.

The update manager appears when there are updates to install. By default, the updates don't download or install automatically, so you'll need to click install and put in your password. The updates are divided by categories like "Important security updates" and "Recommended updates".

Here are the menus...

Accessories has a calculator, disc writing software, text editor, terminal, and Tomboy. I just wanted to point out Tomboy because it seems like an interesting piece of software. Tomboy is a note-taking program, but it allows you to link notes together. It's not new. It's been around since Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) or maybe longer.

There are a whole bunch of games included. They're nothing special, the kind of stuff you'd expect to come with an operating system, and yes there's solitaire.

There's F-Spot for photo collection and editing, Gimp for image editing, OpenOffice.org Draw for vector image and flow chart drawing, and there's a scanning program.

There's the Empathy instant messaging client, Evolution mail and calendar client, Firefox web browser, the Transmission bittorrent client, and Ubuntu One. Empathy replaces Pidgin in Ubuntu 9.10, while Ubuntu One is new. Ubuntu One is a service which is similar to Dropbox. Ubuntu One is a service where your files are synchronized within your Ubuntu One folder between computers that have Ubuntu One installed. The free version has a 2GB storage capacity, while you can also pay $10/month for 50GB of storage.

There's a dictionary, Evolution (again), OpenOffice.org Impress (presentation program), OpenOffice.org Calc (spreadsheet program), OpenOffice.org Writer (word processor).

Totem is the video player, while Rhythmbox is the music app.

Places menu.

System/Preferences menus. I just want to point out that starting in Ubuntu 9.10, the icons for the System menu are turned off by default. You can turn them on in the Appearance preferences.

System/Administration menus.

The Sound preferences were changed drastically. It is now incredibly simple. You can no longer choose different sounds for different events. Now the only options on the first tab is for the sound theme, the alert sound, and whether you want window and button click sounds. The other tabs are for hardware and input and output settings.

I'm pretty sure Disk Utility is new to Ubuntu 9.10 . It looks and feels similar to Apple's Disk Utility in Mac OS X.

Login Screen Settings had a HUGE downgrade. What used to allow you to change themes, modify functionality, and choose auto-login settings now has a total of... 3 options. Show the login screen, automatically log in, and automatically log in after x seconds.

Add/Remove Applications has been replaced by the Ubuntu Software Centre. It now looks much fancier in comparison to Add/Remove Applications. The Ubuntu Software Centre is the start of what will become the Ubuntu Software Store, which will allow the purchasing of paid software. The only downside of the Ubuntu Software Centre is that you can no longer install/remove more than one application at a time.

Synaptic is the package manager included with Ubuntu. All software is included as "packages". Synaptic allows you to remove packages, or get more from repositories available on the internet. There are at least 20000 packages available via the package manager.

You've gotta have a web browser with an operating system. Come on, it's 2009! Ubuntu includes Firefox as its web browser.

Proprietary software such as Adobe Flash is not included. For legal reasons, some codecs such as MP3 are not included. A bundle of these proprietary codecs, fonts, and software are available by installing the Ubuntu-Restricted-Extras package within Synaptic.

That's it.


I will soon be reviewing a certain "minty" linux distribution.